The Hindu : All for English

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 14, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

All for English

LANGUAGE IS MEANT for communication. Maybe, also for a greater understanding of literature and culture. But, often a language is used as a political weapon. Administrators play around with a language, seeking to score points and gain mileage out of it. An excellent example of this can be English. It has always led a troubled existence. It has been disliked, even hated, largely because the people who originally spoke the language conquered, colonised and terrorised half the world, or just about. However, this was not always a reason: we do not really know why the French, for instance, have such a deep-rooted aversion for English. In fact, there is reportedly a rule in France that prohibits newspapers and periodicals from using English words. In India, there have been attempts to discard English in a strange sort of way: the study of the language has been utterly neglected since the 1980s, with the result that even university graduates find it hard to pen a couple of correct sentences in it. The less said about academic textbooks the better: they are full of howlers. Even respected Government publications merrily blunder along, committing the most basic mistakes.

Happily, though, a change is now perceptible. The new information age, driven by the Internet, has, in many ways, made English a preferred language. "Bring back English'' seems to be the cry in some of the erstwhile Western colonies, which replaced this language with the native tongue as the medium of instruction in schools 50 years ago. Some of the developed Asian economies too are realising the importance of English. In China, in Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, efforts are on to catch up with English. These countries are justifiably afraid that unless they master English, they will not be able to keep pace with the rest of the world, given the new global order of communication and information. And, India appears to be a catalyst. Its information technology men and women have proved that a command over English is essential if one is to move ahead in this sphere. Even in a nation like Japan — where the general belief is that English does not really enhance career prospects — Indians have not only excelled themselves, but have shown that the language is an important tool.

What needs to be done now, and with a sense of urgency, is to create — or recreate — an attraction for languages, English included, of course. Whatever the prejudices against it, the fact is that English is on its way to being a language that most people will understand. Address a letter in English, and the chances are that it will find its destination. Address it in Hindi or Finnish, the postman may be foxed. What is more, when all is said and done, English has this magnanimous ability to absorb new words. About two and a half centuries after Samuel Johnson wrote his English dictionary, the language has "befriended'' words from so many other tongues. The latest revised edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary of English includes hundreds of Indian words. Leading the list of 600 Indian English entries are "Hindutva'', "dada'' (not don, but older brother), "panchayat'', "chai'', "pani'', "puri'' and "dosa'' (not "dosai"?). Indian words form 20 per cent of the tome and rank as the third largest component after American and Australian English segments. And why not? About 150 years after Lord Macaulay introduced English in India to create "babus'' for the British bureaucracy, 70 million Indians speak the lingo, a number that is higher than that in the U.K. Strangely, even those absolutely unlettered mouth words that Clive and Warren Hastings once sought refuge in to frighten a race. It only makes sense to capitalise on this strength of ours, and not let some stupid bias come in the way of what seems like a victory in this era of the Internet.

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